Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The document that was prepared and the documentation that we had in hand on harmonization, we briefed the Standing Committee on the Social Envelope on this a number of times, Mr. Chairman. So we did go through the process of involving MLAs in the process.
What did happen in the end was that notification was sent out to those individuals who would be affected by this, but there was a shortcoming in the information that was passed on. What has been decided, Mr. Chairman, was to look, because of the concern by Members, at those people out there who will be negatively impacted by this harmonization process.
Members expressed concern about that, so we decided we would delay the implementation to give us time to ensure the people who are negatively impacted on this are properly notified of the amount of change that is going to take place for their particular rents. Additionally, to see if there were mechanisms by which we could deal with the specific issue of how to implement the system for those who are going to be negatively impacted.
We feel there are definite benefits of this to a lot of people, Mr. Chairman, because people who are low-income earners and so forth, many of them will benefit. There are people who will be negatively impacted. Those are people who have the resources to be able to pay. We needed the time and that is why the delay was instituted. We needed the time to be able to deal with that and to give proper notification to individuals, and then to take the time to take this back to Cabinet to redevelop the process. Thank you.